The best way for Israel to stop terrorist attacks in its territory is by first ceasing its occupation of all Arab lands and the continual, unrestrained building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

In 1967 Israel went to war in self-defense and captured Arab land. Israelwas right in defending itself. However, the issue now is no longer so much self-defense. The problem is that Israel will not pull back to its pre-1967 borders so long as many Israelis and most evangelical Christians in America continue to believe that present day Jews have a biblical right to all of Arab territory in Palestine. For this reason a biblical examination of the issue is necessary.

As an evangelical and conservative Christian, of Indian origin, I wish toset the biblical issue in proper perspective.

Although the modern state of Israel now has every right to exist as any other nation (as long as it honors the UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights) this does not mean that Zionism (the belief that Jews have a biblical right to all of Palestine) is correct. And it is Zionism that is primarily fuelling the building and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Arab land.

From a purely biblical perspective Zionism has enormous problems.

The fact is that almost none of the Jews in modern Israel are descendants of the original Jews of Palestine thousands of years ago. Most of the Jews in Israel today are descendants of Europeans who had converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages (known as Khazar or Ashkenazi Jews).